An oddly familiar story involving severed Internet cables has cropped on the newswire. But rather than the more comedic scenario of an elderly woman cutting access to the Web in Georgia and Armenia, a ship’s anchor has caused many of East Africa’s citizens to experience a slowed internet connection.

According to the BBC, a ship dropped anchor in a restricted area (now they know why) off the coast of Kenya while waiting to enter the heavily-trafficked port in Mombasa. The fiber-optic cables belonged to one of East Africa’s three Internet service providers The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS). To help maintain some form of web access to its users, Teams has purchased a small amount of bandwidth from Seacom, so its users aren’t cut off completely. But traffic has apparently slowed to a crawl in Kenya, Rwanda, Burund, Tanzania, and Ethiopia — said to be cut by 20 percent — hardly enough to support viewing YouTube videos.

“Sadly, this reveals how fragile the physical infrastructure for Africa’s internet access is. Because of the distances involved, the primary connections, in the main, are undersea cables which can be easily disrupted by a careless anchor,” said Toby Shapshak to The Guardian, editor of Stuff magazine in South Africa, and author of a forthcoming book on innovation in Africa.

The break happened despite the fiber optic cable being guarded by a steel housing. The cable’s armor is usually made up of galvanized steel wires that wrap around the delicate interior of the cables, all of which is coated in a water-blocking compound. The fiber optics can also be placed in a steel tube, depending on the level of protection needed and the manufacturer of the cabling.

The repairs are said to take up to 14 weeks. Until then, those affected by the incident with have to live with limited access. But even after the repairs are made, you have to wonder if this accident will drive up costs in internet prices for East Africans — and thus effect internet growth in the region.